Ashdod, one of the oldest cities in the world, and currently Israel’s largest port, will dedicate one of its streets to Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII (1881-1963), in recognition of his work to save a large number of Jews during World War II.

The fifth largest city in Israel will also offer this recognition to another great rescuer of those persecuted by the Holocaust, Raoul Wallenberg (1912-1947), a Swedish diplomat recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations,” since his work saved the lives of over one hundred thousand Jews.

The initiative of dedicating a street in the city to the Pope and to the Swedish philanthropist was promoted by Boris Giterman, acting mayor of Ashdod, in response to a request from the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which is chaired by Eduardo Eurkenian and was founded by Baruch Tenembaum.

In an interview with Aleteia, Giterman explains how and why he decided to propose this recognition of the actions of Pope John XXIII, who began a new era of relations between Jews and Catholics when he convened the Second Vatican Council.

Why have you presented this proposal, which is so significant for Jewish-Christian relations?

My decisions generally have an emotional basis, since I am a human being. The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation’s proposal arrived just when Israel was celebrating the Holocaust Remembrance Day, so of course it moved me very deeply. An event in remembrance of the Holocaust was being held in the city of Ashdod on that same day, and I personally arrived with the proposal, which I presented to the city. The Holocaust always moves me deeply. I often visit Yad Vashem, the official Israeli memorial to victims of the Holocaust. In particular I am moved by the example of the rescuers who risked their lives to save the victims of the Holocaust. It is something that must be remembered and taught to the younger generations. The city of Ashdod is very involved in the task of education, especially as regards teaching students about the Holocaust. It is also involved in giving recognition to the rescuers. The city has many immigrants from the former Soviet Union and for this reason, a book was published in Russian about the Holocaust survivors from the Soviet Union. These were “adult children,” since they are people who experienced the Holocaust at a very young age, but the terrible situation made them adults.

What message does this Israeli city want to give to the world by honoring John XXIII in this way?

The city of Ashdod is made up of ninety communities from different places of origin, and the message of the mayor of the city of Ashdod is one of peace, tolerance, brotherhood and respect between all the communities. Therefore it is very important to honor the memory of those who saved Holocaust victims. Here in Ashdod, we realize that each community must preserve its own cultural heritage and respect it. With this gesture, we are spreading a message of love, hope, and peace. We hope other cities will also adopt it. In Ashdod, we say we hope we will always love our neighbor.

In Rome, it will most likely cause great satisfaction to see that a city in Israel has decided to honor the memory of Pope John XXIII. No doubt it will greatly please Pope Francis, who has shown a great closeness to the Jewish people during his ministry as archbishop in Argentina and now as bishop of Rome.

It would certainly be a great honor to visit the Vatican for this reason. To the extent of its ability, the city of Ashdod, contributes to Israel’s diplomatic relations with the world. We have agreements with sister cities in the former Soviet Union. Now we will visit Moscow and other smaller cities. For me it will be a great honor to do everything I can to help diplomatic relations and fellowship relations in the Jewish through the State of Israel, and with the Catholic world through the Vatican.

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew unveiled the Raoul Wallenberg Congressional Gold Medal.

The medal unveiled Thursday morning at the U.S. Treasury in Washington is inscribed with “hero of heroes” beneath the likeness of the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

On the flip side, a depiction of a hand distributing the protective passports that Wallenberg distributed among Hungarian Jews is accompanied by the text, “He lives on forever through those he saved” and “One person makes a difference.”

Lew in his remarks noted that Wallenberg traveled to Hungary as part of an effort initiated by the U.S. War Refugee Board to protect Hungary’s Jews; the board was founded at the behest of Henry Morgenthau, like Lew, a Jewish U.S. treasury secretary.

“It is fitting that we are gathered here at the Treasury Department, just two floors below the very rooms in which the War Refugee Board was established, to pay tribute to Raoul Wallenberg,” Lew said. “A man who chose not to be indifferent to the suffering around him. Who put his own career and life at risk to arrange for the rescue of people he did not know, and whose legacy of courage and self-sacrifice touched not just the men and women that he was able to help, but also future generations.”

Also present at the ceremony were members of Wallenberg’s family and Annette Lantos, the widow of Rep. Tom lantos (D-Calif.), a Holocaust survivor who was saved by Wallenberg and led the effort in 1981 to confer honorary U.S. citizenship on the diplomat.

Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), who with Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) initiated the legislation that awarded the medal, also spoke at the ceremony.

A broad range of Jewish community groups convened as the Raoul Wallenberg Centennial Celebration Commission voted to advocate for the recognition in 2012, the centenary of Wallenberg’s birth. The commission was spearheaded by the Friedlander Group, a lobbying outfit.

Wallenberg disappeared while being escorted out of Hungary toward the Soviet Union. The Soviets claimed that he died of a heart attack in 1957, but other evidence indicated that he was killed in Lubyanka prison or that he may have lived years longer.

The Congressional Gold Medal has been conferred since the American Revolution to honor “the highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions.” It was first awarded to George Washington.

Medal winners need not be Americans. Past honorees include Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter; Natan and Avital Sharansky, who led activism on behalf of Soviet Jews; the Dalai Lama; and Burmese democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

For the hundreds of inmates inside Moscow’s Lubyanka prison who most likely heard the sounds of the fireworks and explosions — 1,000 cannons shot 1,000 times — this moment no doubt stirred a wide range of emotions. Lubyanka housed many top generals and officials of the defeated Nazi regime, some sharing cells with former resistance fighters, including a 32-year-old Swedish diplomat named Raoul Wallenberg.

Upon learning the news, the young Swede must have felt hopeful that for him the end of the war also signaled  the end of his ordeal. After having saved thousands of Jews from certain death in wartime Budapest, Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviet military counterintelligence in January 1945. Yet many details of his imprisonment and final fate have never been revealed.

Sweden declared 2012, the 100th anniversary of his birth, as the official Wallenberg year, dedicated to celebrating his creativity, stamina and courage in saving Hungarian Jews. But in terms of establishing the full circumstances of Wallenberg’s disappearance in the Soviet Union, the 2012 commemoration was a resounding disappointment.

For a variety of reasons, the Swedish organizers decided to focus attention entirely on highlighting Wallenberg’s legacy, excluding almost completely the question of his fate. As a result, many observers feel that Sweden once again missed a golden opportunity to press the Russian authorities for answers. The approach was also troubling because it signaled that Sweden no longer considers solving the Wallenberg mystery important.

Just as perplexing is that Swedish officials continue to emphasize all the obstacles that  stand in the way of clarifying Wallenberg’s fate instead of energetically pursuing the many options that are available to investigators. Unfortunately, this position plays directly into the hands of President Vladimir Putin, who still shows only a limited willingness to properly reckon with the Soviet past.

As historian Nikita Petrov argued in an April 12  article in Novaya Gazeta, the Kremlin’s  restrictive approach to reviewing the crimes of Stalin’s regime is deeply troubling since it appears closely linked to Putin’s broader political aim of strengthening the state’s power.

According to Petrov, the fact that Russia still refuses to present complete information about sensitive issues, like the Katyn massacre in which thousands of Polish officers were slaughtered in 1940 on Josef Stalin’s orders, raises serious concerns about Russia’s political maturity and its political future.

The official attitude to the Katyn question and similarly complex historical issues, such as the Wallenberg case, serves as an important indicator of the health of Russian civil society overall.

It will be interesting to see if Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt presses his Russian counterparts on the ruling issued recently by the Russian Constitutional Court in another sensitive case, namely to allow Petrov to review collections of the Soviet intelligence operations in post-war Germany from 1948-53.

The Constitutional Court agreed with Petrov’s argument that the term of secrecy for these records has expired. This decision sets an important precedent for similar requests, including those currently pending in the Wallenberg case.

Swedish diplomats say they remain interested in thoroughly investigating all aspects of the Wallenberg question, including reasons for his arrest, but so far they have not lobbied for access to the archives of Soviet security  and intelligence agencies that could shed light on the matter.

They have not firmly protested the fact that Russian archivists have withheld key documentation in the Wallenberg case, such as records from Lubyanka prison from late July 1947 that could verify if Wallenberg was held there as “Prisoner No. 7.”  Similarly, Swedish officials have ignored several false claims made by representatives of the Federal Security Service archives, including the spurious statement that no investigative file was ever created for Wallenberg, which is patently untrue.

Discovering the full  truth about Wallenberg’s disappearance requires bold, carefully targeted action, just like the rescue of the Jews of Budapest. But Sweden can’t seem to muster the same level of courage and determination regarding the Wallenberg file. Unfortunately, both Sweden and Russia consider the current status quo in the Wallenberg investigation acceptable and perhaps even preferable because of the many problematic revelations a complete resolution  of the case could produce.

For instance,  what exactly did Wallenberg’s diplomatic colleagues tell Soviet officials about him in the spring of 1945, when they believed that Wallenberg had died in Budapest? Why were they allowed to return home while Wallenberg was not?

Key questions also remain about Wallenberg’s prominent relatives, the Wallenberg bankers, especially their business relations with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II and beyond. These ties appear to be connected with the mystery of Wallenberg’s disappearance

The Swedish government and its international partners should find the courage to use the  Wallenberg case as an important test case for democratic values in Russia. The West needs to draw a line in the sand, just as a young  Swede once did in Nazi-controlled Hungary. Such a step would commemorate Wallenberg’s legacy better than any monument or celebration and could lead to an important affirmation of democratic principles for all Russians fighting for civil liberties and human rights in their country today.

THE late Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg will become an honorary Australian citizen for saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust in World War II.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who made the announcement on Monday, said it was the first time Australia was bestowing such an honour.

The award of becoming an honorary Australian citizen was a “symbolic recognition of Mr Wallenberg’s tireless devotion to human life during the Holocaust”.

“The lives of those he rescued are Mr Wallenberg’s greatest memorial and Australia is honoured to have survivors he rescued living in Australia today,” Ms Gillard said in a statement.

Mr Wallenberg led a rescue operation in Hungary during World War II, saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by issuing protective passports and providing shelter in diplomatic buildings.

He was arrested by Soviet troops in January 1945 and his fate remains a mystery, although some reports say he died two years after the war ended.

In 1957 the Soviet Union claimed he had died of a heart attack in his cell in July 1947, but several former prisoners from the infamous Gulag prison system say they knew him as Prisoner Seven. Rumours have circulated that the diplomat cooperated with American intelligence agencies and a former KGB general once referred to a Western Diplomat held prisoner at the organisation’s headquarters at the Lubyanka prison for 30 years.

Why he was captured and kept a prisoner by the Soviets remains unknown, despite an admission by Russian authorities in 2000 that he was executed at the Lubyanka in 1947. Last January Swedish authorities announced they were holding a new inquiry into his death.

Mr Wallenberg had previously been recognised as an honorary citizen of the United States, Canada, Hungary and Israel.

Governor-General Quentin Bryce will host a presentation ceremony at Government House in Canberra on Monday, May 6.

A Swedish diplomat who led a rescue operation to save nearly 100,000 Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary has been recognised as the first honorary Australian citizen.

Raoul Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust in 1944 by issuing protective passports and providing shelter in diplomatic buildings.

Mr Wallenberg had already been honoured in Australia through parks and monuments but Governor-General Quentin Bryce said she was proud the country was now going “one step further”.

“I cannot think of a more appropriate and significant figure to welcome to our Australian family,” she told a ceremony in Canberra on Monday.

Mr Wallenberg had tried to save as many Jews as possible, “repeatedly putting his own life at risk,” she said. “Wallenberg’s life is an example to all of us.”

The diplomat was arrested by Soviet troops in January 1945 at the age of 34. The exact date and circumstances of his death are not known.

Frank Vajda, a professor of neurology at Melbourne University, was saved by Mr Wallenberg’s actions as a nine-year old boy in Hungary.

He has since campaigned for honorary citizenship for Mr Wallenberg for decades.

Professor Vajda and his mother were lined up in front of a machine gun for not wearing the yellow Star of David in 1944. Mr Wallenberg persuaded members of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party to release their group.

“I owe everything to Australia, but I owe my life to Raoul Wallenberg,” he said, describing the diplomat as an “ordinary but very fine man.”

Monday’s ceremony at Government House was also attended by George Farkas, the son of John Farkas – a resistance fighter who was the last known person to see Mr Wallenberg alive.

“I think it’s a recognition that some people can do unbelievable good in the face of reprehensible evil,” he said of the award.

Mr Farkas said there had been sightings of the diplomat up into the 1980s in Russian prisons and psychiatric hospitals.

“Can you imagine what Wallenberg must have thought … that the world had forgotten him?” he said. Mr Wallenberg has already been recognised as an honorary citizen of the United States of America, Israel, Hungary and Canada.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced that Mr Wallenberg would be similarly honoured by Australia last week, in recognition of his “tireless devotion to human life during the Holocaust”.

The move was supported by the Coalition. On Monday, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said it would have been “so easy to look the other way”.

“Of all the examples of resistance to Nazi tyranny, Raoul Wallenberg’s is perhaps the most flagrant,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Ms Gillard said that the Prime Minister gave ‘‘long and careful consideration’’ to the most appropriate form of recognition for Mr Wallenberg, including consulting with the ministers for Immigration and Foreign Affairs, before making a recommendation to the Governor-General.

As the first honorary Australian, Mr Wallenberg’s memory gains the ‘‘unique recognition associated with that status,’’ but the award does not give any status or entitlements to Mr Wallenberg’s descendants, the spokeswoman said.

The Gillard government is not currently contemplating honorary citizenship for any other individuals.

On the 29th of April there was in Jerusalem a conference on the figure of Pope Roncalli. Gariwo interviewed Danny Rainer, of IRWF Jerusalem, about the results of this conference and the candidacy of John XXIII as a Righteous among the Nations.

Could you tell me something about this conference, about the reaction after it?

The conference on the figure of Pope Angelo Roncalli took place on the 29th of April. There were some important people from the Vatican, scholars from universities, people from different NGOs. The conference was dedicated to Angelo Roncalli, Pope John XXIII, and to his action during and before his papacy, for example what he did when he was Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul and in Paris. This conference commemorates the 50th anniversary of his passing – he was born in 1963 – and had different panels: the first one dealt with Roncalli and the Shoah, and it analyzed the role of Roncalli in order to save Jews, the second one was chaired by Baruch Tenembaum – from IRWF – and was about Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel; the third section dealt with Nostra Aetate and the Vatican Council II; and the fourth one was about the legacy of Roncalli.

There were many attendance from the Vatican, there was the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal and the Custodian of the Holy Land Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa.

The conference was very interesting, had a lot of echoes because there were many journalists from different newspapers and Mr Tenembaum was interviewed by them. During the conference we also handed over the Papa Roncalli dossier which we submitted to Yad Vashem in 2001 to promote the candidacy of Pope Roncalli as Righteous among the Nations.

Did you get any reply from Yad Vashem about this candidacy?

There was not any official reply from Yad Vashem, but in principle I believe that the opposition stayed in the fact that, according to Yad Vashem, Roncalli did not go against his superior, and this is one of the criteria that Yad Vashem applies when considering the candidacy of diplomats. And despite he was a very high profile figure who became pope, there is the issue of how Yad Vashem sees his superior Pius XII. Yad Vashem was very critical about this question. These are some considerations, but at least we didn’t get an official reply from them.

Professor Yehuda Bauer took part as speaker in the first Panel. What did he say in his speech? He talked about Roncalli’s role in the Shoah?

He made a very interesting discourse, but he did not speak about Roncalli. His intervention was about the example of several Catholics who, during the Shoah, saved Jews, and he analyzed the issue of how many Christians rescued Jews.

Instead Dina Porat, Chief historian from Yad Vashem, presented a very structured lecture of what Roncalli did during the Shoah.

Finally, what do you think is the legacy of Pope Roncalli, especially for Catholics-Jewish relation?

I think that Roncalli during his life showed he was a very good friend of the Jewish world. He saved Jews, we have no doubt about that, and he had a very important role when he was nuncio, by helping the Jewish leadership, before the establishment of the State of Israel, to find a way to establish their State. He helped Moshe Sneh – the Jewish Agency representative – to go to the Vatican and try to convince the Pope not to force the Latin American countries to vote against the United Nation partition plan.

Sneh contacted Roncalli and he arranged an audience with the Secretary of State of the Vatican, Cardinal Tardini, and convinced him that the Vatican should make pressure on the American countries on this issue, and eventually most of the Latin American countries voted in favor of the Resolution about the partition of Palestine. In addiction, we know what he did with Nostra Aetate, the document that removed one sentence that can be offensive – talking about the perfidious Jews – and that came from the traditional blame of “deicide” directed to the Jewish people.

This revolutionary document opened a new era in relations between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people after centuries of prejudice and persecution.
We have the feeling that his legacy is very important, and that Pope Francesco will follow it, trying to set better relationship between Christians and Jews and between Christians and any other religion.

A memorial showcase and plaque to the victims of the Holocaust

Next June 3, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passing of a remarkable man: Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII.

Next June 3, the world will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passing of a remarkable man: Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII.

It is a shame the Israeli public is not well aware of him, as he was one of the greatest friends of the Jewish people.

Back in the 1940s, as the apostolic delegate of the Vatican in Istanbul, Cardinal Roncalli spared no efforts to save as many Jews as possible from the Nazi extermination. He went out of his way to help the beleaguered Jews.
Among his deeds was the dispatching of “certificates of immigration” to Palestine via the Vatican’s diplomatic courier. He also overtly intervened in favor of Slovakian and Bulgarian Jews. Had he only done this, we would say “dayenu,” enough.

In February 2011, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a global-reach NGO I had the honor to found, together with the late US Congressman Tom Lantos, submitted to Yad Vashem a voluminous dossier with evidences of Roncalli’s life-saving feats during the Shoah and with our strong recommendation to have him recognized as Righteous among the Nations. Our request is still pending.

After the war, as papal nuncio in Paris, Cardinal Roncalli made another great contribution to the Jewish people. This was revealed to me independently by the late Moshe Tov, one of the founders of Israel’s diplomacy and much later by Yair Zaban, who needs no introduction.

As a young man, Zaban was the personal secretary of Dr. Moshe Sneh, a prominent leader of the Jewish Yishuv who in 1947 held the senior post of head of the political department of the Jewish Agency in Europe.

It was Sneh who confided to Zaban the kind of help he got from Roncalli. Sneh’s boss, Moshe Shertok (Sharett) was worried about the voting of the Latin American countries in the upcoming UN General Assembly that was about to address the partition plan. He was concerned about the influence of the Vatican on those countries, fearing that the Holy See would guide them to vote against the plan.

Shertok called Dr. Sneh and instructed him to persuade the Vatican not to object the voting preferences of the Latin American countries in which the Vatican wielded a considerable influence.

Eventually, through a good friend, the Jewish priest Alex Glasberg (who in 2004 was recognized as Righteous among the Nations for his rescue actions during the Shoah) put Sneh in touch with Monsignor Roncalli, who in turn arranged for the Jewish leader an audience with the then-secretary of state of the Vatican Cardinal Domenico Tardini. The meeting took place on October 3, 1947, and it turned out that Dr. Sneh was successful.

Most Latin American countries voted in favor of the motion (with the sole abstention of Cuba). Angelo Roncalli was delighted. Had he only done this, we would say “dayenu.”

His role as Pope John XXIII is better known.

He established a respectful ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Jews, as set out in the Decretum de Judaeis (“Decree on Jews”), which was drafted for the Second Vatican Council in 1962. The draft openly mentions the “wrongs done to the Jews in the past or in our time. Whoever despises or persecutes this people does injury to the Catholic Church.”

Pope John XXIII went further and in an unprecedented gesture he ordered to erase from the Good Friday Prayer a derogative sentence which portrayed the Jews as “perfidious.”

Had he done only this, we would say “dayenu.”

On April 29, I will be in Jerusalem to participate at the “International Conference – Honoring the memory of Pope John XXIII, the Shoah, the Jews and the State of Israel,” where I will chair the panel which will deal with “Roncalli and the Establishment of the State of Israel.” This fills me with emotion. A few weeks ago, I learned that the Municipality of Ashdod has accepted the Wallenberg Foundation’s proposal to name a street of this important city after Angelo Roncalli. Perhaps Roncalli is starting to get recognition.

Later this year, together with the chairman of the Wallenberg Foundation, Eduardo Eurnekian, we shall fly to Bergamo, Italy to award a specially-coined medal to Monsignor Loris Capovilla, aged 97. Capovilla was the personal secretary of Pope John XXIII and has devoted his whole life to keeping alive the legacy of his beloved boss.

I am also very moved following the election of my fellow countryman, the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio, as the Supreme Pontiff.

Pope Francis is one of the first members of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.

I know him personally. He is a humble man with a great heart.

As successor of the late Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, he became the custodian of the Commemorative Mural emplaced at the Buenos Aires Cathedral, in memory of the victims of the Shoah and of the two terrorist attacks perpetrated in the Argentinean capital, in the ‘90s, against the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish community center. This monument is unprecedented. In fact, it is the only Jewish memorial in a Catholic Cathedral.

Often I ask myself why this mural does not get the attention it really deserves. It has a strong symbolism and relevance, underscored by the victims of the Holocaust, the victims of the AMIA bombing (a tragedy which has resurfaced following the scandal generated by the Memorandum of Understanding between Argentina and Iran), and all this amplified by the fact that the guardian of the mural is an Argentinean who became pope.

I have a sense of comforting deja vu. A strong feeling that Pope Francis will follow the path set by Blessed Pope John XXIII. Both men share the same humility and the same love and respect for human beings, regardless of their background or religious belief.

The foundation I lead, together with our chairman, Eduardo Eurnekian, is not Jewish, but personally, as a Jew, I feel the necessity of being grateful, of recognizing goodness (hakarat hatov), which is one of the pillars of Judaism.

Therefore, we should cherish the blessed memory of Raoul Wallenberg, Angelo Roncalli and all those who stood-up against evil and made a difference.

*The writer is the founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a global-reach NGO whose mission is to preserve and divulge the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg and other rescuers.

As David Fromkin put it in his widely praised history of World War I and its aftermath, “A Peace to End All Peace”: “Rape and beating were commonplace. Those who were not killed at once were driven through mountains and deserts without food, drink or shelter. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians eventually succumbed or were killed .”

The man who invented the word “genocide”— Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish origin — was moved to investigate the attempt to eliminate an entire people by accounts of the massacres of Armenians. He did not, however, coin the word until 1943, applying it to Nazi Germany and the Jews in a book published a year later, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.”

But to Turks, what happened in 1915 was, at most, just one more messy piece of a very messy war that spelled the end of a once-powerful empire. They reject the conclusions of historians and the term genocide, saying there was no premeditation in the deaths, no systematic attempt to destroy a people. Indeed, in Turkey today it remains a crime — “insulting Turkishness” — to even raise the issue of what happened to the Armenians.

In the United States, a powerful Armenian community centered in Los Angeles has been pressing for years for Congress to condemn the Armenian genocide. Turkey, which cut military ties to France over a similar action, has reacted with angry threats. A bill to that effect nearly passed in the fall of 2007, gaining a majority of co-sponsors and passing a committee vote. But the Bush administration, noting that Turkey is a critical ally — more than 70 per cent of the military air supplies for Iraq go through the Incirlik airbase there — pressed for the bill to be withdrawn, and it was.

The roots of the genocide lie in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The empire’s ruler was also the caliph, or leader of the Islamic community. Minority religious communities, like the Christian Armenians, were allowed to maintain their religious, social and legal structures, but were often subject to extra taxes or other measures.

Concentrated largely in eastern Anatolia, many of them merchants and industrialists, Armenians, historians say, appeared markedly better off in many ways than their Turkish neighbors, largely small peasants or ill-paid government functionaries and soldiers.

At the turn of the 20th Century, the once far-flung Ottoman empire was crumbling at the edges, beset by revolts among Christian subjects to the north — vast swaths of territory were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 — and the subject of coffee house grumbling among Arab nationalist intellectuals in Damascus and elsewhere.

The Young Turk movement of ambitious, discontented junior army officers seized power in 1908, determined to modernize, strengthen and “Turkify” the empire. They were led by what became an all-powerful triumvirate sometimes referred to as the Three Pashas.

In March of 1914, the Young Turks entered World War I on the side of Germany. They attacked to the east, hoping to capture the city of Baku in what would be a disastrous campaign against Russian forces in the Caucuses. They were soundly defeated at the battle of Sarikemish.

Armenians in the area were blamed for siding with the Russians and the Young Turks began a campaign to portray the Armenians as a kind of fifth column, a threat to the state. Indeed, there were Armenian nationalists who acted as guerrillas and cooperated with the Russians. They briefly seized the city of Van in the spring of 1915.

Armenians mark the date April 24, 1915, when several hundred Armenian intellectuals were rounded up, arrested and later executed as the start of the Armenian genocide and it is generally said to have extended to 1917. However, there were also massacres of Armenians in 1894, 1895, 1896, 1909, and a reprise between 1920 and 1923.

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies has compiled figures by province and district that show there were 2,133,190 Armenians in the empire in 1914 and only about 387,800 by 1922.

Writing at the time of the early series of massacres, The New York Times suggested there was already a “policy of extermination directed against the Christians of Asia Minor.”

The Young Turks, who called themselves the Committee of Unity and Progress, launched a set of measures against the Armenians, including a law authorizing the military and government to deport anyone they “sensed” was a security threat.

A later law allowed the confiscation of abandoned Armenian property. Armenians were ordered to turn in any weapons that they owned to the authorities. Those in the army were disarmed and transferred into labor battalions where they were either killed or worked to death.

There were executions into mass graves, and death marches of men, women and children across the Syrian desert to concentration camps with many dying along the way of exhaustion, exposure and starvation.

Much of this was quite well documented at the time by Western diplomats, missionaries and others, creating widespread wartime outrage against the Turks in the West. Although its ally, Germany, was silent at the time, in later years documents have surfaced from ranking German diplomats and military officers expressing horror at what was going on.

Some historians, however, while acknowledging the widespread deaths, say what happened does not technically fit the definition of genocide largely because they do not feel there is evidence that it was well-planned in advance.

The New York Times covered the issue extensively — 145 articles in 1915 alone by one count — with headlines like “Appeal to Turkey to Stop Massacres.” The Times described the actions against the Armenians as “systematic,” “authorized, and “organized by the government.”

The American ambassador, Henry Morganthau Sr., was also outspoken. In his memoirs, the ambassador would write: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact.”

Following the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Three Pashas fled to Germany, where they were given protection. But the Armenian underground formed a group called Operation Nemesis to hunt them down. On March 15, 1921, one of the pashas was shot dead on a street in Berlin in broad daylight in front of witnesses. The gunman pled temporary insanity brought on by the mass killings and a jury took only a little over an hour to acquit him. It was the defense evidence at this trial that drew the interest of Mr. Lemkin, the coiner of “genocide.”

“The lives of those he rescued are Mr Wallenberg’s greatest memorial and Australia is honoured to have survivors he rescued living in Australia today,”Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement.”

“The award of honorary Australian citizenship is symbolic recognition of Mr Wallenberg’s tireless devotion to human life during the Holocaust.”

The recognition was made to mark the centenary year of Wallenberg’s birth.

He was posted to Nazi-occupied Budapest in July 1944 and rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews by issuing them protective passports in the final months of the Holocaust.

Wallenberg, then 32, also acquired buildings to house as many Jews as possible and provide them with extraterritorial status.

He was last seen alive on January 17, 1945 as Soviet forces ousted German and pro-Nazi Hungarian troops. Mystery surrounds his fate but according to the official Soviet account he died in prison in Moscow in 1947.

“This is the first time that Australia has bestowed such an honour,” said Gillard, with Australia joining the United States, Canada, Hungary and Israel who have already made him an honorary citizen.